Public Lands

Over the past five years, the boundaries of two of Utah's national monuments have fluctuated dramatically. National monuments don’t usually change size from one administration to the next. But since 2016, the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase have experienced a yo-yo effect. 

  The U.S. Forest Service has released its draft management plan for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison, also known as 'G-MUG' national forests. The plan includes a significant increase in the amount of land that would be available for logging, and groups that advocate for public lands are raising concerns that it recommends only 34,000 acres of new wilderness across the forest.

The newly proposed federal MAPLand Act would provide resources to digitize map records as part of an effort to improve access to public lands.

In January, the Biden administration paused oil and gas leases on public lands. This month, Biden announced an additional leasing pause in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, re-sparking the debate over the administration’s handling of oil and gas leases, including those in Utah.

As Utahns begin planning summer vacations, the USDA Forest Service is encouraging people to be safe and prepared in public lands.

Newly-confirmed U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland made her first official trip in her new role this week, and she came to Utah to visit the controversial Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National monuments.

“I'm here to listen, I'm here to learn. I know that decisions about public lands are incredibly impactful to the people who live nearby,” Haaland said in a press conference Thursday.

It’s UPR’s Spring Member Drive. On Access Utah that means some very special programming, including some Best Of segments from favorite episodes and some great new conversations. Today our guest for the hour is writer and photographer Stephen Trimble. We’ll talk about some of his recent pieces in various publications titled variously: “Facebook, alas, is not your neighborhood bar, “Restore Utah’s national monuments and make the fix permanent,” “Utah in 125 Words,” and “Big Books at Big Times--Expanded New Edition!!!”

Jim Robbins has written recently about pandemic-related overcrowding on Montana’s rivers; the connection between the growth of deadly viruses and the destruction of nature; the effects of public lands policy during the Trump Administration; geothermal energy; and an internet of animals. We’ll talk with him about public lands and related topics as the Biden Administration gets underway.

From Delicate Arch to the Zion Narrows, Utah’s five national parks and eight national monuments are home to some of America’s most amazing scenic treasures. In his new book “Wonders of Sand and Stone,” Frederick Swanson presents little-known accounts of people who saw in these sculptured landscapes something worth protecting. introducing us to the early explorers, scientists, artists, and travelers as well as the local residents and tourism promoters who worked with the National Park Service to build the system of parks and monuments we know today.

This time on Access Utah, a public lands cooperation success story. A while back, the aspen on Monroe mountain in Central Utah were in serious need of restoration. The situation could easily have descended into a blame game with wildlife advocates saying that livestock were eating all of the young aspen and grazing advocates saying that wildlife were eating all of the young aspen. Instead all sides launched an innovative project: the Monroe Mountain Working Group. Individuals and groups that in other circumstances might have been fighting came together to solve the problem. 

A Center for Western Priorities study found that the Interior Department has issued 57 separate actions since March 6, when President Donald Trump signed the first COVID-19 emergency bill. Erik Molvar, the executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, said Interior released the Great Basin Fuel Breaks Project last week. According to Molvar, the project would destroy thousands of acres of sage grouse habitat in Utah and do little to control wildfires.

After pressure from elected officials including Utah Governor Gary Herbert, the Bureau of Land Management dropped plans to auction off two parcels for oil and gas leasing near Arches National Park. The parcels overlapped the famed Slickrock Bike Trail and Moab’s sole source aquifer.

Various Moab government and business leaders have come out in opposition to the Trump administration’s plans to allow an oil and gas lease on the nearby Slickrock Trail. The group is decrying what they say is an opportunity currently mis-understood by the Department of the Interior to support the power of world famous recreation assets like the Slickrock Trail. They say that these types of outdoor treasures bring revenue flows and tax receipts to public land communities and create real long term jobs and that oil and gas development does not deliver the same economic benefits.

About 76-hundred acres of land and more than three miles of access to public lands located between the Pioneer Mountains and Craters of the Moon National Monument are being protected thanks to the help of a conservation easement. The easement surrounds the Cenarrusa Ranch, located northeast of the town of Carey, which was recently purchased from The Nature Conservancy.

Bill Lipe is professor emeritus of anthropology at Washington State University. He has spent much of his more than 50 year career in Utah archaeology beginning with the archaeological salvage of Glen Canyon before the dam construction and on into Cedar Mesa where he became a leading scholar in the early Basketmaker agricultural societies of southeastern Utah. Dr. Lipe began his work at a time when there was little federal legislation protecting archaeology or guiding preservation efforts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations organization for evaluating and presenting the science related to climate change, released a comprehensive report last week for public officials around the world on the relationship between the land and climate.  The organization provides the world’s governments with scientific assessments to develop climate policies.

William Perry Pendley was announced as the acting director of much of the country’s federal lands Monday. The thing is, Pendley thinks the government shouldn’t even own those lands. 

For 12,000 years, people have left a rich record of their experiences in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park. In The Capitol Reef Reader, award-winning author and photographer Stephen Trimble collects the best of this writing—160 years worth of words that capture the spirit of the park and its surrounding landscape in personal narratives, philosophical riffs, and historic and scientific records. 

It’s a pledge drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Ken Sanders from Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. We’ll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite recent episodes of the program.

How can the stories we tell protect the places we love? Friends of Cedar Mesa and Torrey House Press are presenting a conversation on the unique ways desert communities can organize around and diversify narratives to protect Utah’s red rock landscapes. Desert Cabal Expanding the Desert Narrative is Friday, March 1 at 7 PM at the Bears Ears Education Center,

567 Main Street in Bluff Utah.

Every American is co-owner of the most magnificent estate in the world—federal public forests, grazing lands, monuments, national parks, wildlife refuges, and other public places. The writer Wallace Stegner famously referred to public lands as “America’s best idea,” but there have always been some who oppose the idea for ideological reasons, or because they have a vested economic interest.

The Utahns in the running to replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who is stepping down amid ethics investigations. A new report shows a link between Wasatch Front air pollution and miscarriages, but many doctors aren't talking about it with their patients. And neighbors work to shut down a homeless hospice clinic on Salt Lake City's east side. 

Few environmental activists are as venerated as Ed Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire. His stories about the landscapes, wildlife, and people of the Southwest have inspired countless numbers of visitors to explore the region’s national parks, monuments, and wild places – ironically, one of his biggest fears. But now, as Desert Solitaire turns 50 years old, local writer and sixth-generation Utahn, Amy Irvine, takes issue with some of Abbey’s views in a new book from Torrey House Press.

At its heart, it’s a battle for homeland and sovereignty. Bears Ears, a remote section of land characterized by its distinctive red cliffs and abundance of juniper and sage, is at the center of a fight over who has a say in how Western landscapes are protected and managed. “Battle Over Bears Ears,” a new documentary film, explores the deep connections to place and the vast cultural divides that are fueling the fight over how the Bears Ears Monument is protected and managed. Whose voices are heard, whose are lost, and how do all sides find common ground in this uncommon place?

Utah has been one of the most popular areas in the United States for filmmakers since westerns hit the big screens almost 100 years ago according to experts in the film industry. Is it possible to reap the economic benefits of movies and commercials while preserving Utah’s iconic landscapes used on camera? 

In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government.

For generations, the Wrights of southern Utah have raised cattle and world-champion saddle-bronc riders ― some call them the most successful rodeo family in history. 

Now, Bill and Evelyn Wright, parents to 13 children and grandparents to many more, find themselves struggling to hang on to the majestic landscape where they’ve been running cattle for 150 years as the West is transformed by urbanization, battered by drought and rearranged by public-land disputes.